Creating Your Own Blog

Do you want to have your own blog or do you want your students to blog? Here are some tips for you.

First, what blogging site will you use? There are plenty to choose from. Keep in mind that sites like Facebook, MySpace, and other social networking sites are blocked by the district. My blogging experince is limited. I just started blogging in June. Being fairly technology savvy, I just jumped in. Here's what I learned:

First, I created a blog in EduBlogs at http://edublogs.org/. It was fairly simple to set up and there are lots of templates to use. The site was really slow and three days into my blogging adventure, my blog was gone and my user name and password did not work. A day later, I tried again and everything was fine and continues to be fine. The Edublog people had been updating hardware and had some problems. It appears that the issues have been resolved now. This resource has been designed just for educators and has an area for student blogs. You can also find information on using this resource in the classroom. It's worth checking out.

While I was having trouble with Edublogs, I decided to try another resource. I use the Google desktop on my computer at home so I decided to use their "Blogger." If you're reading this post, you've found my Google blog. This resource also has nice templates and is fairly easy to use. I haven't used all of the features yet, but the ones I have used are working well. I especially like the ease of using the Google video tool and linking my videos to the blog.

Important: When you set up your blog in either resource, don't use your school district e-mail account. Each site will send you a verification e-mail that requires you to click on a verification link. The district SPAM filter will stop those e-mails and you will not be able to complete the final blog set-up. My suggestion is that you set up a Google e-mail account (or Yahoo or other web based e-mail) so that you can complete the registration process.

Also, remember when posting student work or student photos on your blog, use first names only.

Happy blogging!